1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods of treatment of blood vessels with bioabsorbable polymeric medical devices, in particular, stents.
2. Description of the State of the Art
This invention relates to radially expandable endoprostheses that are adapted to be implanted in a bodily lumen. An “endoprosthesis” corresponds to an artificial device that is placed inside the body. A “lumen” refers to a cavity of a tubular organ such as a blood vessel. A stent is an example of such an endoprosthesis. Stents are generally cylindrically shaped devices that function to hold open and sometimes expand a segment of a blood vessel or other anatomical lumen such as urinary tracts and bile ducts. Stents are often used in the treatment of atherosclerotic stenosis in blood vessels. “Stenosis” refers to a narrowing or constriction of a bodily passage or orifice. In such treatments, stents reinforce body vessels and prevent restenosis following angioplasty in the vascular system. “Restenosis” refers to the reoccurrence of stenosis in a blood vessel or heart valve after it has been treated (as by balloon angioplasty, stenting, or valvuloplasty) with apparent success.
Stents are typically composed of scaffolding that includes a pattern or network of interconnecting structural elements or struts, formed from wires, tubes, or sheets of material rolled into a cylindrical shape. This scaffolding gets its name because it physically holds open and, if desired, expands the wall of the passageway. Typically, stents are capable of being compressed or crimped onto a catheter so that they can be delivered to and deployed at a treatment site.
Delivery includes inserting the stent through small lumens using a catheter and transporting it to the treatment site. Deployment includes expanding the stent to a larger diameter once it is at the desired location. Mechanical intervention with stents has reduced the rate of restenosis as compared to balloon angioplasty. Yet, restenosis remains a significant problem. When restenosis does occur in the stented segment, its treatment can be challenging, as clinical options are more limited than for those lesions that were treated solely with a balloon.
Stents are used not only for mechanical intervention but also as vehicles for providing biological therapy. Biological therapy uses medicated stents to locally administer a therapeutic substance. The therapeutic substance can also mitigate an adverse biological response to the presence of the stent. Effective concentrations at the treated site require systemic drug administration which often produces adverse or even toxic side effects. Local delivery is a preferred treatment method because it administers smaller total medication levels than systemic methods, but concentrates the drug at a specific site. Local delivery thus produces fewer side effects and achieves better results.
A medicated stent may be fabricated by coating the surface of either a metallic or polymeric scaffolding with a polymeric carrier that includes an active or bioactive agent or drug. Polymeric scaffolding may also serve as a carrier of an active agent or drug.
The stent must be able to satisfy a number of mechanical requirements. The stent must be have sufficient radial strength so that it is capable of withstanding the structural loads, namely radial compressive forces imposed on the stent as it supports the walls of a vessel. “Radial strength” of a stent is defined as the pressure at which a stent experiences irrecoverable deformation. The loss of radial strength is followed by a gradual decline of mechanical integrity
Once expanded, the stent must adequately provide lumen support during a time required for treatment in spite of the various forces that may come to bear on it, including the cyclic loading induced by the beating heart. In addition, the stent must possess sufficient flexibility with a certain resistance to fracture.
Coronary artery disease treatment has experienced three revolutions since 1970s. The first one is balloon angioplasty in the 1970s, followed by metallic stent in 1990s, and the third one is metallic drug eluting stent (DES) in 2000s. Currently, all market available metallic DESs are made from biostable metals, which stay in the body permanently after implantation, make any further non-invasive screening or re-intervention more difficult.
Stents made from biostable or non-erodible materials, such as metals, have become the standard of care for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) as well as in peripheral applications, such as the superficial femoral artery (SFA), since such stents have been shown to be capable of preventing early and later recoil and restenosis.
In order to effect healing of a diseased blood vessel, the presence of the stent is necessary only for a limited period of time. The development of a bioresorbable stent or scaffold could obviate the permanent metal implant in vessel, allow late expansive luminal and vessel remodeling, and leave only healed native vessel tissue after the full absorption of the scaffold. Stents fabricated from biodegradable, bioabsorbable, and/or bioerodable materials such as bioabsorbable polymers can be designed to completely erode only after or some time after the clinical need for them has ended. Consequently, a fully bioabsorbable stent can reduce or eliminate the risk of potential long-term complications and of late thrombosis, facilitate non-invasive diagnostic MRI/CT imaging, allow restoration of normal vasomotion, provide the potential for plaque regression. In addition, the bioabsorbable stents do not permanently jail side branches or curtail the future use of noninvasive imaging for follow-up.
Unlike a durable stent, the properties of a bioabsorbable stent change dramatically with time once implanted. The ability of the stent to provide adequate treatment depend not only its initial properties, but also its properties as a function time, or its degradation profile. The degradation profile will influence behaviors essential to adequate treatment such as the time period that the stent can support a lumen at a deployed diameter and the time for complete bioabsorption.
In summary, fully bioresorbable scaffolds have the potential to restore vascular integrity as a brand new vascular restoration therapy, which is expected to be the fourth revolution of vascular disease treatment. Although this new concept is very exciting, so far most bioresorbable scaffold projects developed by various companies and institutes are far away from real commercialization. One important reason is that for a lot of researchers in this area, although they may have focused work for scaffold quality control at time zero (i.e., at the time of implantation before degradation begins in the lumen), they have not adequately addressed ways for degradation profile control.